RAILWAY "PLANT" AT WADY HALFA. 235 Sarras, the operations at Wady Haifa were being carried out with the utmost energy, and every native who chose to work could find constant employment. When the patrolling of the Nile by armed vessels was first ordered there had been little property at Wady Haifa to need protection, except the enormous accumulation of material for constructing the line which had been abandoned; material which had cost Egypt dear, since, by the terms of tinagreement with the contractors, royalties and compensations representing fines for breach of contract, had been claimed.

For seven years a large quantity of the valuable but unused materials and stores, worth perhaps nearly a million of money, had been accumulating unrecoverable interest in the sheds and workshops at the Wady Haifa station. The battalion under the command of Colonel Trotter had recently been at Wady Haifa and were ready to protect them, but until the rebellion they had been left comparatively uncared for, though the inhabitants of the district were not likely to loot the buildings, except for the lighter portion of the materials, since railway bars and sleepers, steamcranes, engines and boilers were not very portable, and even the picks and shovels were not adapted for everyday use in Egyptian husbandry. However, there had been a certain amount of watchfulness on the part of the Mudir of Dongola's men, and when Colonel Trotter came into occupation, the accumulations of the " plant" were very large, and some additions had probably been made to them when it was determined to repair the line and the trucks, and to complete the slight extension where works had been commenced.

The railway buildings stretch along the inner bank some 50 yards inland for about half a mile. The chiei buildings are, of course, the station-house and engine-shop, which are of stone and of considerable size; the others, placed at intervals along the river bank, are little more than huts or sheds with the usual mud walls; the last group of them forming a sort of small square at the entrance of the village, between which and the station were to be seen the heaps of materials left at the time the work was abandoned. An eye-witness thus catalogued them: — "Steam-